Tornado confirmed west of Kingston

While the rest of us were watching Saturday’s wild weather from the comfort of our homes, Matthew Hoekstra was watching a tornado rip apart the world around him.

Hoekstra was working in a large storage building next to his family home off Highway 2, west of Odessa, on Saturday morning when a tornado plucked the wood and metal building off its foundations, reducing it to rubble with Hoekstra still underneath.

The fact it was a tornado, and not a more common microburst, was confirmed Monday by Environment Canada.

“We can confirm that it was tornadic. It was an actual tornado,” said Peter Kimbell, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada out of Ottawa.

He said tornados are not common in this area but have happened before.

“It was a bit unusual that there would be a tornado near Kingston in September but it happened and we can confirm that it was an F2 tornado that affected the Storm’s Corners area,” he said.

A Environment Canada investigator was in the area Monday and reported back that a barn had been damaged and a trailer overturned.

“Those are consistent with an F2 tornado with winds of 180-240 kph,” said Kimbell. “We also had eyewitnesses as well who saw the tornado.”

He said the track of the “low-end F2” was about 150 metres wide and six kilometres long.

It stretched along Withers Road, ripping the roof off a house and stripping trees of their limbs, before crossing County Road 7 and hitting the Hoekstra property.

It happened about 10 a.m. Saturday. Matthew Hoekstra was in the storage building, which sits about 20 metres from the home of his parents, John and Irene Hoekstra, waiting for his sister Jessica’s boyfriend, Brennan McGurn, to come out of the house to get him.

“I was in the shop, just tinkering around,” he remembered. The building, just two years old, is about 15 metres by 30 metres in size, about 5 metres high. There are two five-metre doors on either end. It houses tractors, four-wheelers and other equipment used on the property farmed by John Hoekstra’s uncles. Hoekstra runs an excavation and construction company in the city.

“ I looked outside because the wind started picking up,” said Matthew. “You look out the window when there’s a storm but you don’t think the building’s going to go down.”

It was raining so hard he could barely see the house, just a few metres away. Then the wind, which was already strong, got even stronger.

“I saw a chair go across the yard and then I saw a tree go across the yard.”

Leaves started swirling.

“No sooner after that the big 18-ft door just flew in and missed me by a foot.”

Then the building itself started coming apart.

“Once the door came in, the air got in there and it pulled everything up.”

The wood-frame walls, covered in steel sheeting, were pulled from the concrete foundations.

“I was standing beside this bench that was right beside the window and I just dove in.” The heavy wooden bench had a second shelf underneath and it was the only place Hoekstra could find that would protect him from the falling walls and roof.

A lucky break was the fact his father, who would normally be working with him in the building, wasn’t home that day. And the family dog Rocky, who usually hangs around as well, was safely inside the house with Jessica Hoekstra.

“It’s probably a good thing because all three of us wouldn’t fit in under there.”

“As I was going under the bench I looked up and I could see the whole 40 by 100 foot roof going, swirling through the air. It was just unbelievable. The noise is so hard to explain, just like a freight train coming through. The wall he was near came loose from the foundations and started pushing the bench in which he was sheltering towards the centre of the building.

“You know the movie Twister? That was exactly what it was like, where they were in the building at the end and everything just peels out. That’s what it did.”

“It was scary. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’m lucky to be here.”

Then everything was quiet again.

“Thirty seconds and it was over. It just chewed everything up just like it was in a blender, just spinning everything.”

He managed to crawl out from the debris, shaken but not seriously hurt. He could see a propane tank used for heating that was on its side nearby. And there were live wires dangling in the rubble.

“When I came out there were sparks and stuff and I could smell propane so I got out in a hurry.”

As he checked himself all over for injuries his sister and her boyfriend came running out from the undamaged house to see if he was okay.

“My head was bleeding a bit and I had some cuts on my arm,” he said, but other than that he was unharmed, if wet from the driving rain.

“ I was drenched, soaked right through to my underwear. I just couldn’t believe what happened. It took a while to settle in. I haven’t eaten anything in two days, just nerves.”

By Monday morning most of the shock had worn off so he was able to become a kind of tour guide for the many neighbours and visitors who showed up to view the damage.

He said everyone who has learned of his lucky escape has been telling him to go buy a lottery ticket.

But Matthew isn’t so sure.

“I used all my luck, I think. I used up all my nine lives.”

Standing next to the debris that once was the equipment building, he pointed to a treeline about 100 metres away.

“The roof cleared those trees and ended up in the woods over there You don’t realize how much force it took to carry it that far.”

He pointed out more of the storm’s aftermath. Next to the building, a two-by-two piece of wood, jagged at one end, had speared a large planter. Pieces of plywood from the walls and roof, many with nails jutting from them, were scattered across an alfalfa field. More sections of the roof rested up against the treeline while, about three metres up a tree, John Hoekstra’s coat was neatly hanging from a branch.

Matthew was able to salvage one irreplaceable item from the field – a mounted deer’s head that had been in the building.

A well-worn path lead from the field into the woods where the roof had ended up.

“We’ve got a path beaten through here because everybody wanted to see this.”

In a clearing it made when it fell from the sky, a 10-metre section of the roof sat resting on top of the trees it had crushed.

Another section, just as big, had landed still further into the woods.

Unbelievably, a light bulb attached to one of the cross beams was unbroken.

John and Irene Hoekstra were away from home when the tornado hit. They have lived in the house for 20 years and were amazed at the damage that could be done to the storage building while not a shingle was missing from the house.

The only damage was to their pool. A Norway maple, planted to mark John’s 30th birthday, had been toppled by the wind and ended up filling their pool with branches and leaves.

“One of the urns that was sitting over there is actually in the pool,” said Irene Hoekstra. “Two chairs are in the pool.”

She had just made an appointment to have the pool closed for the winter.

“I guess I don’t have to worry about that now.”

A half dozen large metal fence sections from around the pool had also been pulled off their fasteners and hurled to the ground.

“Here’s a piece of steel from a barn three kilometres away from here,” said John Hoekstra as he pointed out a twisted piece of metal on his lawn.

“I had loose plywood in (the building) and somebody was picking plywood up on the next road over, County Road 4,” he said.

He had yet to place a dollar value on the damage but believes it will be covered by his insurance.

“I hope so. I haven’t heard from anybody yet.”

Irene Hoekstra said they learned a lesson from Saturday they want to pass on to others.

“We just wanted people to be aware, when there’s a storm coming, you’ve got to take cover because you never know what’s going to happen.”

John Hoekstra isn’t too worried about the damage to the tractors and other equipment that was inside the building.